Chile Forum

Chile Forum in English for Gringos, Expatriates, and Travelers to Exchange Ideas and Information about Chile, South America. For more than a decade, the Chile Forum has been the center for expats to share their collective knowledge and experience about living in Chile. The Chile Forum is a free community service brought to you by the law office of Spencer Global.

All things related to Moving to Chile, tips, tricks, FAQS. Here is where to exchange information between those that have already moved and those planning to move to Chile so you do not need to learn the hard way. Please also check Living in Chile forum for related information.

How many people do you think die each year prematurely from air pollution or develop respiratory problems in Santiago ?

Plenty, I would guess the real extent of the problem is under-reported. But even in places where atmospheric contamination shouldn't be an issue, it is. In La Serena, since around 2000, we have seen a big increase in diesel soot.The elderly buses (pre-amarillos) that were prohibited in Santiago ended up en provincia, where they happily belch out black fumes to this day. (so much for the Revisión Técnica!) It doesnt help that low-sulphur diesel ciudad is only sold in Santiago. And since it hardly rains here, the soot stays in circulation.The effects of PM 2.5 particles on human health are well known, but the environmentalists are strangely silent on this issue.

Less well-known are its effects on electronics...my pbx pc that had run for 8 years non-stop recently failed, and wouldn't reboot. Ended up pulling it completely apart, and found that the normally-hidden area of the motherboard under the CPU heatsink was covered with black clingy soot, which is mainly Carbon, hence conductive. It wouldn't brush or blow off. Had to wash it off with alcohol to get the machine going again.

I ran in to the exact same problem years ago. I was asked to have a look at some computers in an office in santiago that were failing. When i opened them up, there was a film of black dust on everything. The heavy metal charged particles in the air were sticking to all the connections on the mother board. The only time i had seen something similar was volcanic dust in central america that also had a charge in the dust and would stick to the computer components. It caused the mb to short out.

I thought that was really strange, until i looked out the window and realized we were on the 7th floor, and all the buildings had a faint dark line around the 7th or 8th floor, where certain types of heavy metals in the smog sort of got stuck in the thermal layers. That was back when they had the yellow buses pushing really heavy diesel fumes in santiago.

Then the problem is on the solutions presented by the government, not what the people did. Their behaviour is perfectly reasonable. They need to balance their need for food with the need to stay warm, and taking some of the money to buy food seems quite reasonable.

Say what?? Where´s written that they bought food with the money provided by the govern.? So, is perfectly reasonable in a huge emergency to buy sport attire with Colo Colo logos to stay warm? Gimme-a-break! That´s called no common sense in my book! It would be better to make a donation to the slums in Calcutta!

I'm from the generation of common sense, wisdom and unfiltered answers. I sayeth as I seeth.

Speaking for myself, If I were Chilean, I guess I would be a facho pobre.
But I guess I'm just an expat whiner.
Whine, whine.

As 41southchile said recently, the problem with Chile that the politicians don't have a vision despite the enormous potential of the country. I'd add that most of population is so focused on the failures that they're not creating a vision either. They don't believe in their country despite all its tremendous achievements. When immigrants who have lived in other places and should have some points of reference join the choir of "everything is so bad and getting worse", it's plain harmful.

That's not about the "positive thinking" mentioned above, just basic psychology: not digging yourself a hole of learned helplessness or even depression with a constant reinforcement of negative thoughts.

Speaking for myself, If I were Chilean, I guess I would be a facho pobre.
But I guess I'm just an expat whiner.
Whine, whine.

When immigrants who have lived in other places and should have some points of reference join the choir of "everything is so bad and getting worse", it's plain harmful.

So what are you going to do? Censorship? I say let people say whatever they want to say, as long as you're able to maintain distance between yourself and their negativity. Also, if everyone were praising Chile like there's no tomorrow, how many more would wanna come here? 'Ain't nobody got time for that'

So what are you going to do? Censorship? I say let people say whatever they want to say, as long as you're able to maintain distance between yourself and their negativity. Also, if everyone were praising Chile like there's no tomorrow, how many more would wanna come here? 'Ain't nobody got time for that'

Nah, just continue replying that's it's decent and not that bad. I don't care much but believe that it's not productive to sustain an echo chamber of any kind, be it positive or negative.

While I'm usually not as negative as some and even somewhat overly positive sometimes, my view has seen two big minuses within the past year, the amount of low skilled immigrants many who refused a generous amnesty and who will indeed change the face of Chile and the failure of the Maersk refrigerated container plant which will give any other multi a big pause before even considering Chile. The biggest minus in my time here was how Chile virtually did nothing with the commodity boom windfall of the 2000s. And the vision problem has unfortunately been a long term one whos only hope are the jovenes who have travelled and been exposed to the extranjero but who themselves are caught up in the maldicion of being glued to smart phone tech and social media.

Future plus, the PGE and the southern cone entry point for the new world economic order of OBOR, other than that, Chile will just remain a sometimes value added commodity producer and will continue to be a nice place to travel, vacation or move to if you got the funds.

Generally, just a SPAM KILLER. You are on your own in this forum. My personal mission here is done.

BUT when necessary, by way of ridicule and truth revelation we shalt do war.

The problem i see with much of chilean population, both good and bad, is such a small percentage of chileans have ever travelled outside of chile. Never mind lived outside of chile.

I still regularly run in to chileans that have never been on an airplane. If they have left the country at all, it is a short trip to argentina, peru, or miami for a week. "well traveled" chileans, might make it as far as new york. A tiny, tiny percent of the country have traveled and lived somewhere else for more than a week.

So, they fail to apreciate what chile has accomplished, and also fail to recognize where chile is failing.

The number one best settled / adjusted / succesful group of expats we see move tochile, also tend to be the most traveled group. Part of that is they see the opertunities in chile, but perhaps are also better equipped to adapt to the problems.

Buying land in Chile is incredibly easy and straight forward with the right lawyer to make sure it's done properly, just follow the steps properly, that's why you should always get professional advice.
Its certainly a lot easier to buy property in Chile as a non resident than it is in New Zealand (NZ was quite easy for non residents until the populists got voted in there in 2017 and they changed it last year) NZ did have trouble with what they wanted to do and had to exclude a few countries that they had free trade agreements with , what I understand you can still buy small plots in NZ and build new, but buying existing housing stock not so easy. Take from that what you like, but Chile has a business/foreign investor friendly govt and a lot of free trade agreements, and the way things move here, I can't see many issues, especially with the urbanisation of the population, there will be no buyers for rural land in years to come if non residents were to be excluded.

In the Lakes Region Chile for 6 years. It looks like New Zealand in some ways, and is nearly at the bottom of the world too, but there the similarities end.